Immigration deal coming within a week

posted at 10:01 am on April 10, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Looks like it’s Let’s Make a Deal time this month, except perhaps for budgets, at least for the moment. At the same time the Senate has cut a deal on gun control by, er, making the status quo slightly more muscular, the Gang of Eight has reached a deal in principle on immigration. It will roll out next week in legislative language, but the negotiations have all but concluded, Politico reports:

The Senate’s immigration Gang of Eight plans to announce a deal within a week but a committee markup is not expected until at least the week of May 6, providing a long period for debate and changes, Senate aides said Tuesday.

Aides said the legislative proposal could be released as soon as Thursday, but is more likely to be ready early next week. The schedule outlined by the aides is meant to satisfy Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has said repeatedly that he wants a full debate and amendment process, to maximize the chances that the final vote is an overwhelming majority.

In what clearly was a concession to Marco Rubio, the agreement includes a public hearing on the bill in committee, with plenty of time for debate and amendments:

A Senate aide told POLITICO: “The senators had a good discussion with [Judiciary Committee] Chairman [Patrick] Leahy this afternoon. We are optimistic that we will be able to introduce legislation soon. Chairman Leahy has agreed to hold a hearing as soon as possible after the legislation is introduced, and has promised to have unlimited debate and amendments during the committee markup.

“Assuming Republican members push for as much time as possible, the committee debate will last through the next recess, giving plenty of time for public debate and review,” the aide added.

The key will be the border-security triggers, which will have to be fairly robust to keep Rubio in the fold. If he abandons the effort, it’s dead in the water. It might still pass the Senate, but without Rubio’s endorsement, the House won’t bother to move on its own version of the comprehensive bill to push it into a conference committee. Everyone knows that Rubio is the key.

So did he get the robust border security triggers he demanded? The Wall Street Journal says yes:

Immigrants in the U.S. illegally would not gain green cards under a bipartisan Senate bill until law-enforcement officials are monitoring the entire southern border and stopping 90% of people crossing illegally in certain areas, according to people familiar with the plan.

The border-security proposal, part of a broader immigration bill being written by eight senators, sets several goals that would have to be met before any of the estimated 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally could apply for permanent legal residency, also known as a green card, according to the people familiar with the Senate talks. Meeting all the goals is expected to take 10 years.

The bill would make the DHS E-Verify system mandatory, a push that border-control advocates have demanded for years. It also makes an overhaul of the notoriously porous visa system a prerequisite for advancing normalization:

In a major change for businesses, all employers would be required after a five-year phase-in period to use the government’s E-Verify system, which screens for illegal workers. E-Verify now is largely voluntary, though some states require it. Some 409,000 employers had enrolled in the program as of last year, the federal government says, a tiny fraction of the estimated six million private U.S. employers, many of which have only a handful of employees.

Along the U.S.-Mexican border, 100% of the border would have to be under surveillance, and law enforcement would have to catch 90% of those who cross the border illegally at “high risk” sections—a term that people following the Senate talks did not define. In 2010, the Department of Homeland Security reported that only 44% of the border was under operational control, meaning officials had the ability to detect and block illegal activity there.

In addition, the government would have to create an electronic system to monitor everyone who exits from the U.S. through airports or seaports, in an attempt to identify people overstaying their visas. People who overstay visas account for a large share of illegal immigrants, as much as 40% by some estimates.

That appears to be a fairly robust trigger for moving ahead with normalization. If implemented as shown — a mighty big if — the US will finally have solved its border security issues and replaced a visa system that may have been an even greater security risk than the border. Without trading for normalization, these initiatives have been left twisting in the wind ever since the 9/11 Commission demanded action on both in 2005.

Again, assuming that these triggers actually are implemented, this is a pretty good trade for all sides.

That appears to be a fairly robust trigger for moving ahead with normalization.

Baloney. It’s an obvious fraud. The real normalization- the soc-called “provisional” legal status (which of course will never be revoked- happens on Day One, before any new enforcement. The “trigger”- which will likely be gutted in future legislation- comes later and is just for citizenship.

Republicans never learn. Cue the horde of so-called “journalists” tooting tear-jerking stories of “suffering”, “unfairness”, and “humanitarian problems” that have to be taken care of prior to securing the border.

It might still pass the Senate, but without Rubio’s endorsement, the House won’t bother to move on its own version of the comprehensive bill to push it into a conference committee. Everyone knows that Rubio is the key.

Why the hell is Rubio the key? Why is his vote more important than that of, say, Ted Cruz?

Again, assuming that these triggers actually are implemented, this is a pretty good trade for all sides.

And you trust the same government that’s been releasing detained illegals and reducing the presence of border agents over the last month using the BS excuse of budget cuts to enforce the security measures in this legislation? The Dems just want the thing passed so they can legalize 20 million people and eventually add them to the welfare and voter rolls. That’s their endgame and everyone knows it. Why the GOP continues to go along with this charade is beyond me.

Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison.

Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years.

Visa violators can be sentenced to six-year terms.

Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals.

Mexico can deport foreigners who are deemed detrimental to “economic or national interests,” violate Mexican law, are not “physically or mentally healthy” or lack the “necessary funds for their sustenance” and for their dependents.

And, along their southern border, the use of deadly force is a common occurrence on the part of federal authorities.

Would certainly cut down on the illegals problem.

Instead, we are offering amnesty with an open border and horribly lax enforcement of current immigration laws.

Common sense, as the saying goes, is, in Washington, a highly uncommon virtue.

They gain legal status immediately. The later green card possibility is irrelevant. Once they are given legal status there is no possibility it will ever be revoked. The border security condition is a fig leaf for Rubio so he can shout “Look what I did!” I laughed out loud when I read the phrase “certain areas.”

Enjoy, folks. You are watching the total collapse of a political party that has existed for 150 years. All that will be left is to make sure the illegals are registered to vote by 2016.

“We are slain. The party is dead, dead, dead!”

Doomberg on April 10, 2013 at 10:26 AM

True. If the Rubio/obama AMNESTY bill passes, not only will Republicans never win the White House, ever again, but, obamacare will be locked in permanently, and every liberal dream will be fulfilled. AMNESTY will kill the GOP, but it will also kill America.

Obama blatantly ignores the immigration laws we have on the books now. For example, he spends millions of tax dollars advertising the availability of food stamps for illegal aliens coming into the U.S. from Mexico, and in the U.S. he advertises the availability of food stamps to anyone, regardless of immigration status (even though U.S. law prohibits illegal aliens from receiving food stamps). He grants visas to any unemployed Third Worlder who applies for one, despite the federal law that says no one who is likely to become a “public charge” (i.e. welfare dependent) should be granted a visa (the Obama administration has denied not one single would-be immigrant a visa on the ground that they may become a public charge). He refuses to deport illegals who have remained in the U.S. despite having multiple deportation orders and having criminal convictions (like his uncle from Kenya). He releases convicted criminal illegal aliens back into U.S. communities instead of deporting them, etc., etc.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that Obama would enforce stricter border security laws. He already knows he can do anything he wants without anyone in the legislature or the courts holding him accountable for his violations of his oath to uphold and enforce federal laws. Why, after five years, would he suddenly decide that federal laws should be enforced as written, especially when those laws deny benefits to members of his voting base (illegal aliens and their relatives in the U.S.)?

I wonder how many pages this ‘deal’ will comprise. They may have it concluded in a week, but it will take a battery of lawyers months to figure it out.

Wouldn’t be easier to simply write the law, “All previous immigration laws and restrictions are hereby revoked,” and be done with it? Think of all the trees that can be saved without using all that paper on a ‘deal’!

Let’s Make a Deal- Senate Edition. I’ve not seen anything that is sure to get past the House.

Happy Nomad on April 10, 2013 at 10:30 AM

The House is as pro-amnesty as the Senate. They will pass whatever the Senate puts in front of them. What’s being argued out right now is how the kabuki theater will play out, and the Republicans trying to wrangle fig leaves to cover themselves with so they can claim to be “shocked, shocked!” that the borders aren’t being secured.

How sad is it really that we find ourselves in a position whereby the only way to get the federal government to perform its primary purpose, protecting our borders, is to trade the normalization of illegal aliens for border security? I mean, think about it. This administration has REFUSED to to it’s job, and instead has held our borders hostage. This is way beyond the making of the sausage. It’s extortion.

Come on, laws and promises about boarder security under Obama, like any laws and promises he doesn’t like, are not to be taken seriously. Suppose such boarder security does happen initially and the amnesty part goes full speed, then the boarder security enforcement goes lax (Obama is going to want to keep those undocumented future democrats coming), will the amnesty part then be stopped? Seriously doubt it. Americans will be played for the suckers they are, again.

Once illegals become ‘legal’, they too will be unemployed because why hire an uneducated illegal who speaks in broken English when you have to pay them minimum wage, carry insurance on them, and pay employer taxes?
Yeah. No more cheap labor for the enabling illegal alien employers. They’ll have to wait for the next 20 million illegals. Meanwhile, these New Democrat voters will want their Obama phones, food stamps, section 8 housing, Medicaid that ‘deserve’.

If Rubio can pull this off, he would be unbeatable in 2016.. Democrats would lose an issue they keep beating the GOP with and the GOP would get a higher margin of the hispanic vote. On immigration GOP candidates have to be on the extreme right in the primaries, and the rhetoric in the primaries drives away hispanic voters.

Romney’s “make life hard for them till they self deport” formula did not do him any good… he tried to moderate after the primaries but the damage was done.. without this issue we can get better candidates and tone down the rhetoric..

Ed Said, “Again, assuming that these triggers actually are implemented, this is a pretty good trade for all sides.”

Really, Ed? You think that Amnesty is a good deal? What about the 660,000 citizens who left the workforce last month? What about all the college grads of the last few years who have had to take minimum wage jobs in restaurants and bars? Not to mention the Black, Latino and teenage unemployed whose rates are 2-3 times higher than our listed 7.6% Unemployment Rate!

Never mind that the previous onetime Amnesty of 1986, with all it’s specifed enforcement conditions, was never implemented and led directly to the 11,000,000 plus who are looking for another wink and a nod from our bozos in D.C. You must be kidding!

Wow. This really has become a parody site – unwittingly. This post is serious, not meant as satire?

Of course the joke’s on intelligent, rational, serious citizens with respect for rule of law, and a revulsion for racism – and its main contemporary manifestations, state-based racial engineering and race-baiting in politics and culture.

Rubio’s a twink and a lightweight – and obviously always was, so this (and his absurd, arrogant, repugnant little bit of race-baiting coercion about “you can’t get someone to vote for you if you just deported their grandmother”) is hardly a surprise. But Ed sort of beclowns himself here, doesn’t he?

It reminds me of Allahpundit way back in the dark days of Iraq, when things were so bad that the bad guys could actually attack Coalition forces in miniscule engagements (leading to hysterical, ridiculous Iwo Jima-like “reporting” in the “press”), musing about whether a snap opinion poll here or there should be the basis of our national security policy.

Based on 2008, and 2012, and the intervening surreal period of lawlessness, degradation, decline, and disgrace, I’d not be surprised if this comically unserious b.s. actually gets close to passage. Seems that gun-grabbing is the actual last live “third rail” in American politics. Even this massive, degrading, civil society and rule of law-shredding race-baiting festival was unimaginable just 6 years ago.

Now, Hot Air reads like a press release from McCain or some slimy Dem senator in a western/mountain state …..

Again, assuming that these triggers actually are implemented, this is a pretty good trade for all sides.

Great, Ed. They can get their grubby little fingers into YOUR wallet first when they make Minnesota into Little Tijuana. They want your money. They already have a beloved homeland and it’s not the USA:

So, we are supposed to believe that a legislative proposal under which illegals are legalized and then the border is secured as outlined by the Wall Street before these individuals are eligible to receive a green card is a prudent course of action?

Schumer on MTP: ‘We’ve come to a basic agreement, which is that first people will be legalized…Then we will make sure the border is secure’

— Byron York (@ByronYork) April 1, 2013

This is absolutely unacceptable…. we should demand the border be completely shutdown before we come anywhere near considering “legalizing” illegal immigrants.

They can get their grubby little fingers into YOUR wallet first when they make Minnesota into Little Tijuana. They want your money. They already have a beloved homeland and it’s not the USA:

Ya got that right. Even some Mexicans here as legal residents don’t want citizenship, just whatever they can milk from our economic system for their families back home and their own retirement back there too.

My wife once worked in the office of a furniture mfg company whose owner was a resident alien, a Mexican who loathed the US and made that clear to his employees, and almost all in the assembly factory were Mexicans themselves. He had no desire to remain in the US, and once retired, he intended to live out his remaining years in the splendid home he already owned in Mexico. Living off what he earned courtesy of his USA customers.

Again, assuming that these triggers actually are implemented, this is a pretty good trade for all sides.

Ed in amnesty shill mode. No, it isn’t a good trade. The idea that we have to excuse lawbreakers before we can start enforcing the law is absurd on its face. And more importantly, it’s absolutely HORRIBLE for America….you know, the only thing that really matters.

That appears to be a fairly robust trigger for moving ahead with normalization.

Moving ahead? Umm…newsflash….normalization occurs on day one. There are no triggers required.

Everyone knows that Rubio is the key.

Which makes him even worse than the rest of them, because this issue likely wouldn’t even be on the table without him running around BS’ing about amnesty. Rubio was never going to walk away. He’ll sign on to whatever they come up with. And hopefully he will be held accountable in any future elections.

If this BS goes through, and it probably will, I will never again vote for a Republican candidate, and will likely start promoting and contributing to democrats. And I’m not alone. So put that in your “autopsy” report, GOP, and stick it where the sun don’t shine.

If Rubio can pull this off, he would be unbeatable in 2016.. Democrats would lose an issue they keep beating the GOP with and the GOP would get a higher margin of the hispanic vote.

jdivito on April 10, 2013 at 12:05 PM

Every ILLEGAL who is granted AMNESTY under Rubio’s plan, all 20 MILLION+ of them, will be locked-in democrat voters – and Rubio, and EVERYONE else, knows it. Rubio has destroyed his political future by pushing AMNESTY, one of obama’s top priorities – IF his plan, or any AMNESTY plan is passed, the Republican Party is dead – and America will follow suit.

If Rubio can pull this off, he would be unbeatable in 2016.. Democrats would lose an issue they keep beating the GOP with and the GOP would get a higher margin of the hispanic vote.

jdivito on April 10, 2013 at 12:05 PM

Every ILLEGAL who is granted AMNESTY under Rubio’s plan, all 20 MILLION+ of them, will be locked-in democrat voters – and Rubio, and EVERYONE else, knows it. Rubio has destroyed his political future by pushing AMNESTY, one of obama’s top priorities – IF his plan, or any AMNESTY plan is passed, the Republican Party is dead – and America will follow suit.

If Rubio can pull this off, he would be unbeatable in 2016.. Democrats would lose an issue they keep beating the GOP with and the GOP would get a higher margin of the hispanic vote.

jdivito on April 10, 2013 at 12:05 PM

Every ILLEGAL who is granted AMNESTY under Rubio’s plan, all 20 MILLION+ of them, will be locked-in democrat voters – and Rubio, and EVERYONE else, knows it. Rubio has destroyed his political future by pushing AMNESTY, one of obama’s top priorities – IF his plan, or any AMNESTY plan is passed, the Republican Party is dead – and America will follow suit.

If Rubio can pull this off, he would be unbeatable in 2016.. Democrats would lose an issue they keep beating the GOP with and the GOP would get a higher margin of the hispanic vote.

jdivito on April 10, 2013 at 12:05 PM

I agree with you 100%. Some just can’t fathom Bush or Perry getting 40 percent of the Hispanic votes who (SHOCKER!) may be Catholic Conservative Hispanic voters who just otherwise aren’t too keen on the “send all them mexcuns back!! policy.

Every ILLEGAL who is granted AMNESTY under Rubio’s plan, all 20 MILLION+ of them, will be locked-in democrat voters – and Rubio, and EVERYONE else, knows it. Rubio has destroyed his political future by pushing AMNESTY, one of obama’s top priorities – IF his plan, or any AMNESTY plan is passed, the Republican Party is dead – and America will follow suit.

Pork-Chop

Never mind that the claim of “we should let democrats win because it takes the issue of the table” is about as stupid as it gets. It’s so stupid, you have to question either the sanity of the person making it, or their motives, because they are either insane, or they’re working for the the opposition.

This has become like a parody site. Ed – seriously? About half of that post seems like uninspired snark or satire, not actually analysis or commentary.

The infatuation with Rubio has been, from the outset, baffling – and further evidence there isn’t much hope. He’s a twink and a lightweight, with a core of foam (see his revolting and disqualifying “you don’t get someone to vote for you by deporting his grandmother” race-baiting crap).

I can no longer make a serious argument that governing or politicking based on common sense, some semblance of American civic sensibility/constitutionalism, rule of law, or logic have any electoral viability. Expedience, racism (in its current, inexorable manifestations of state-based racial engineering and universal race-baiting in the press and culture), and top-down lawlessness (both the SCOTUS/Roberts kind and the EO exec. branch kind) are now the default setting, the framework.

But it is kind of nauseating to see those who should know better just swallowing the toxic poison gleefully, and expecting golf claps from what they must presume to be a very, very dim audience.